CRASH-LANDING FLYING WIZARDS

by Martin Walsh

When I get round to writing a book on the urban (and rural) legends of East Africa -- yes, I can see you all pointing to the pigs in the sky -- it will definitely include a section on crash-landing flying wizards. Last night I was sifting through a pile of press cuttings made in Tanzania a decade and more ago, and came across the three items that are the subject of this post. Witchcraft and sorcery can be a serious and deadly business, and many of the cuttings that I made at the time were about the ongoing witchcraft killings in Sukumaland (cf. Mesaki 1994) and the moral panic surrounding rumours of a transnational trade in human skins (cf. Sanders 2001). Recent attention has rightly focused on the killing and mutilation of albinos for their body parts, a very real horror that has forced many Tanzanian albinos to seek refuge or go into hiding. By contrast the reports and exchange reproduced below are a reminder that not only is there widespread scepticism about some beliefs in the occult, but that witchcraft narratives can also be the butt of good humour.

The first two items, shown here side-by-side, are the original reports published on Monday 6th January 2003 in The Guardian and Nipashe newspapers. Both articles were evidently written by the same correspondent, Mary Edward, working in Dodoma for Press Services Tanzania (PST), a news agency owned, like the two newspapers, by Reginald Mengi's IPP Media. They are about the same incident involving a flying "wizard" or witch who was alleged to have fallen to the ground, landing near-naked amidst a group of Christian worshippers in Kongwa in Dodoma Region. The reporter herself claims to have been in the congregation and witnessed the incident, though whether she actually saw him fall to earth before hearing his subsequent confession is left unsaid. The Swahili article includes some details not given in the English version. Its title makes it clear that the wizard's "flying saucer" was a circular winnowing basket (ungo), the favoured mode of witches' transport in mainland Tanzania. And the scene of the incident is identified as the yard of an Evangelistic Assemblies of God Tanzania (EAGT) church. This is an important detail, because the fallen wizard's confession is just the kind of testimony that can be heard during conversion to pentecostalism.

Readers can judge for themselves whether or not these articles were written and published tongue-in-cheek. The response on the "Opinion" page of The Guardian two days later (on Wednesday 8th January 2003) certainly was. It comprised a letter to the editor from an "Earthbound regular Guardian reader" in Mikocheni, Dar es Salaam, and was accompanied by a cartoon drawn for the page by David Chikoko:

At the beginning of this well-crafted lampoon, the writer alludes to the fact that belief in "flying wizards" is widespread in Tanzania, and cites a case of alleged naked night-flying in Muleba District in Kagera Region. This is clearly a hazardous pursuit, and I remember seeing other articles in the Tanzanian popular press announcing winnowing basket accidents. Some reports are from further afield and predate the 2003 story, like the 2001 Pan African News Agency article 'Zambians traumatised by crash-landing flying wizards', which related that "More than 30 stark naked people suspected to be wizards "crash-landed" on rooftops of houses owned by families, institutions and filling stations in Zambia last year, leaving the population puzzled." (Landing on the roofs of petrol stations has a certain logic, if not in terms of the need to refuel, at least in view of the large flat area they might offer to wizards descending in an emergency.)

It is quite likely that published narratives such as these have influenced reporting, both by people claiming to know of incidents and by journalists reporting on or inventing these reports in turn. A quick search on the internet suggests that stories of occult flying and its failure are now circulating more readily than ever via Tanzania's rapidly growing blogosphere. One favourite from last year was the tale of an old hag from Mwanza who was said to have crashed, quite literally, into the funeral of the actor Steven Kanumba. Given that the funeral was attended by tens of thousands of mourners, it is perhaps not surprising that narratives of this kind should emerge. What is more disturbing, though, is the fact that these beliefs can also generate violence, and result in the death of people suspected to be witches who have crashed to earth. There's a distressing video on YouTube of a naked man killed by a mob in Kimara, Dar es Salaam, for just this reason. It was uploaded in May 2010 (I won't link to it), and the attached description notes that the alleged witch was rumoured to be en route to the Seychelles for a witches' convention. It's easy to find humour in fictions like this, but not in such tragic consequences.

References

Anon. 2003a. 'Wizard' drops from heaven. The Guardian (Dar es Salaam), Monday 6 January 2003: 3.

Anon. 2003b. Teach widely wizard's flying skills. Letter to the editor, The Guardian (Dar es Salaam), Wednesday 8 January 2001: 6.

Edward, Mary. 2003. Adaiwa 'kusafiri kwa ungo'. Nipashe (Dar es Salaam), Monday 6 January 2003: 3.

Mesaki, Simeon 1994. Witch-killing in Sukumaland. In Ray Abrahams (ed.) Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania. Cambridge: African Studies Centre. 47-60.

Mulenga, Mildred 2001. Zambians traumatised by crash-landing flying wizards. Pan African News Agency (Dakar). Online at http://allafrica.com/stories/200101060031.html [no, I can't see the full text either...]

Sanders, Todd 2001. Save our skins: structural adjustment, morality and the occult in Tanzania. In Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders (eds.) Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London and New York: Routledge. 160-183.

FLYING FROM DAR TO ZANZIBAR AGAIN

I can't resist posting a few more photos taken on a flight from Dar to Zanzibar, adding to those I put up earlier this year under the heading Flying from Dar to Zanzibar. The following shots were taken on a Coastal Aviation flight on 22nd September this year: we left Dar half an hour after midday and arrived in Zanzibar about twenty minutes later. This time my camera didn't run out of memory and I managed to get some images of the final stages of the flight.

Mlimani: the University of Dar es Salaam

Coastline north of Dar es Salaam

The sea, mid-channel

Controls in mid-flight (flight path and location on the screens)

Submerged island and reef

Chumbe island and lighthouse

Ras Shangani from the south

Zanzibar town from the south

suburbs of Zanzibar town

FLYING FROM DAR TO ZANZIBAR

I've lost count of the number of times I've flown between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. But until last month I'd never tried to take photographs of the journey. In the mid-90s, when I flew regularly on light aircraft, I didn't have a good enough camera; and in recent years I've usually been a passenger on larger aeroplanes with misty windowpanes. So in early November I was thrilled to find myself sitting alone on the back seat of a small plane with access to windows on both sides, through which I took most of the photos shown below. It was a sunny morning with a few patches of cloud, and stayed that way until we began the approach to the airport in Zanzibar, where it was pouring down with rain. By this time, though, my camera's memory chip was full, and so I didn't get any shots of the end of the flight.


Coastal Aviation flight to Zanzibar on the morning of 6 November 2011: the view from the back seat



The domestic terminal of Julius K. Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam



The main terminal of Julius K. Nyerere International Airport, Dar es Salaam



Suburbs north of the airport in Dar es Salaam

Suburbs of Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam: looking towards the city centre and Indian Ocean

Ubungo and the road out of Dar

The University of Dar es Salaam

Msasani Bay looking towards the peninsula

The Msasani Peninsula

Bongoyo Island

Bongoyo Island and clouds

Mbudya Island

Kunduchi

Kunduchi Beach Hotel and Resort

The mainland coast between Mbweni and Bagamoyo

The mainland coast opposite Zanzibar

Reef and rainbow 1

Reef and rainbow - 2

Reef and rainbow - 3

Reef and rainbow - 4

Reef and rainbow - 5

Reef and rainbow - 6

Looking towards Pungume Island and Unguja

Kwale Island and Menai Bay

Reef and the Fumba Peninsula

Reef near the Fumba Peninsula - 1

Reef near the Fumba Peninsula - 2

Reef near the Fumba Peninsula - 3

Looking towards Chumbe Island

EPONYMY IN BONGOLAND

One of my favourite examples of linguistic innovation in Tanzania was the rapid transformation in 1996 of a politician’s name into a term of ridicule in Swahili. Ramadhani Kihiyo became CCM MP for Temeke constituency in Dar es Salaam in the first multi-party general elections in October 1995. But his election was challenged, and in the subsequent petition hearing it emerged that he had lied about his academic qualifications (there’s a nice summary of these proceedings in Tanzanian Affairs, No.55). Kihiyo resigned his seat at the end of May 1996, and his name became a byword for fake certificates and invented resumés.

I remember this well because it was the running joke among my travelling companions (government officials and a driver from Dar) when I was visiting villages in Pawaga, in Iringa District, in September 1996. ‘Fulani ana kihiyo’, and the plural form ‘Fulani ana vihiyo’, ‘So-and-so has bogus qualifications’, was the expression I heard in endless variations and hilarious applications as we drove along the dusty dry-season roads. As this became widespread usage in the country it was said that people who shared Kihiyo’s Sambaa name were dropping it to avoid its unfortunate associations and the embarrassment thus caused.

Fortunately for them, time has since begun to erase memories of the Kihiyo scandal, and many Tanzanians don’t know what a kihiyo is, though the practice it refers to is all-too familiar. A quick search of the internet produces a few examples, all of them using kihiyo as a term for the person with the invented qualifications (e.g. ‘huyo kihiyo!’, ‘that faker!’) rather than the made-up achievements (paper or otherwise) themselves.

The only other example of eponymy in Swahili that I can think of was coined during the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, when US President Bill Clinton’s extra-marital relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was a major international news story. Among at least some urban Tanzanians kumk(i)linton mtu, ‘to “clinton” someone’, is now a jocular euphemism for fellation, kunyonya (lit. ‘sucking’) in everyday Swahili.

If this was an English expression you’d expect it to be a reference to whatever the president did to his young intern. But as Clinton told the courts, he didn’t really do anything, and the Swahili slang refers to the act that Monica is alleged to have performed on him. So while it would be correct to say that Monica “clintoned” Bill (Monica alimklinton Bill), you can’t use this eponymous verb to say that he had “clintoned” her – or indeed any other woman. It is possible, however, for one man to “clinton” another, linguistically-speaking that is.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that these two examples of contemporary eponymy derive from political scandals and the prominence given to them in the newly-liberalised Tanzanian media. But the first seems not to have stuck and I don’t know how widely used or understood the second is, beyond the circle of Zanzibari women and Bongo dwellers that I’ve heard it from. I can’t imagine seeing the likes of ‘kihiyo, n. vi-’ or ‘k(i)linton, v.’ in a printed Swahili dictionary anytime soon, but would love to be proved wrong.

MUMIANI AND CHINJACHINJA

Mumiani and chinjachinja were once the very stuff of urban legend in East Africa, and they haven’t entirely remained in the graves that historians implicitly consign them to.

Although Luise White in Speaking with Vampires (2000) claims these two terms for blood-takers to have been synonymous in everday use, etymology and distribution suggest that this hasn’t always been the case. Mumiani is a coastal Swahili term with an Indian Ocean pedigree that can refer both to the imagined drawers of blood as well as the medicine made from it; while chinjachinja and its variants is a a rather more literal name for the supposed perpetrators of these and other crimes. The reduplicated Swahili verb kuchinjachinja means ‘to slaughter, cut throats again and again’, and by extension ‘kill repeatedly, commit mass murder’. I first heard stories about the wachinjachinja of the colonial era and after in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania in the early 1980s, and it’s a name that seems to have a much wider currency up-country.

In October 2000 I asked a 34 year-old Zanzibari woman what she understood by mumiani and chinjachinja. There is, she said, an obvious difference. The mumiani take blood and sell it, but don’t kill their victims, leaving them with some blood in their bodies. The chinjachinja, however, kill and cut up their victims for their own purposes (whatever these may be). She remembered mumiani from Zanzibar. When she was a child there was a European couple living alone at Gymkhana (near Kilimani and the cemetery), where they had a large garden with a lot of trees in it. They were said to be mumiani and children were told not to pass there at dusk or after. This warning was repeated by a lot of people; and in the same context she and other children were also told not to let strangers escort them anywhere.

More recently, in the last couple of years (i.e. between 1998 and 2000), she had heard a story about chinjachinja in Dar es Salaam. A rich man with a large house in Oyster Bay (she didn’t know whether he was European or not) was said to have helpers who enticed women there with money. He has sex with them, then drugged, killed and cut them up. He kept the heads, breasts and genitalia of his victims, but chopped the rest of their bodies into pieces and flushed them into the sea down a drain. One day a woman who was a habitual drug-user brought to his house. One of the guards there had some connection with and knew her. When her host slipped pills into her drink she was unaffected, and while he was taking a bath she saw the heads of previous victims in his fridge. The friendly guard came and told her to run away with him, and she did. They told the police who went to the house that same night. But the killer was long gone, and only some of the evidence of his killing remained – the body parts that he kept.

My Zanzibari informant heard this last tale in a hair salon in Dar and relayed it to me in a hotel on the Msasani Peninusla, just round the corner from one of the city’s most notorious expatriate pick-up bars and a road leading down to Oyster Bay that turns into a mecca for kerb-crawlers after dark. Whereas her memory of mumiani in post-revolutionary Zanzibar conjured up warnings from the colonial (and perhaps even precolonial) past, this story of a chinjachinja in Dar had all the flavour and ingredients of a contemporary urban legend – and what better place than a modern hair salon to hear it. There’s nothing about ‘vampires’* or blood-suckers here – who knows why the killer wanted to kill and dismember his female victims in this way? The parts he is said to have kept suggest a sexual motive, and make this a moral tale about the exploitation of vulnerable women by wealthy (and often foreign) men, a reflection of the setting in which it was told. And the gruesome picture it paints is uncomfortably close to the known practice of real mass-murderers, including the case of Bradford’s ‘crossbow cannibal’ that is filling the British Sunday papers as I write.

* Speaking with Vampires is a catchy title for a great book but Luise White’s generic use of ‘vampire’ is open to question, as are a number of her observations on etymology and translation. And she is wrong when says that “[t]here are no words in the languages of the people I write about for blood-drinker or blood-taker” (2000: 10). Swahili mnyonya-damu, ‘blood-sucker’, is one for a start.